1 <?xml version=
"1.0" encoding=
"utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='
2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/
1.0/' xmlns:
atom=
"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen
</title>
5 <description></description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/
</link>
7 <atom:link href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel=
"self" type=
"application/rss+xml" />
10 <title>How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)
</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html
</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html
</guid>
13 <pubDate>Sun,
3 Jul
2016 14:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
14 <description><p
>For a while now, I have wanted to test
15 <a href=
"https://whispersystems.org/
">the Signal app
</a
>, as it is
16 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
17 friends and family are already using it. As I by choice do not own a
18 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected. And I wanted to
19 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
20 machine. But yesterday I managed to get it working. I used the
21 Github source, compared it to the source in
22 <a href=
"https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US
">the
23 Signal Chrome app
</a
> available from the Chrome web store, applied
24 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
25 asked for the hidden
"register without a smart phone
" form. Here is
26 the recipe how I did it.
</p
>
28 <p
>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
31 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
34 <p
>Next, I patched the source to use be able to talk to other Signal
38 cat
&lt;
&lt;EOF | patch -p0
39 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/background.js
40 --- ./js/background.js
2016-
06-
29 13:
43:
15.630344628 +
0200
41 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/background.js
2016-
06-
29 14:
06:
29.530300934 +
0200
46 - var SERVER_URL =
'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org
';
47 - var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL =
'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com
';
48 + var SERVER_URL =
'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:
4433';
49 + var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL =
'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com
';
51 window.getSocketStatus = function() {
52 if (messageReceiver) {
53 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
54 --- ./js/expire.js
2016-
06-
29 13:
43:
15.630344628 +
0200
55 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/
0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-
06-
29 14:
06:
29.530300934 +
0200
59 - var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
0;
60 + var BUILD_EXPIRATION =
1474492690000;
62 window.extension = window.extension || {};
67 <p
>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
68 an expiration timestamp. This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
69 It is set
90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
70 The value is seconds since
1970 times
1000, as far as I can tell.
</p
>
72 <p
>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
73 script to launch Signal in Chromium.
</p
>
80 --proxy-server=
"socks://localhost:
9050" \
81 --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
84 <p
> The script set start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
85 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
86 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
87 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
88 connections if they use source IP address.
</p
>
90 <p
>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
91 "Standalone Registration
" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
92 repository. I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
93 Chromium debugging tool, visited the
'Console
' tab and wrote
94 'extension.install(
"standalone
")
' on the console prompt to get the
95 registration form. Then I entered by land line phone number and
96 pressed
'Call
'.
5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
97 repeated the verification code three times. After entering the number
98 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
99 Signal from my laptop.
101 <p
>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
102 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
103 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
104 setup. It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
105 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
106 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
107 So better than many options, but not great. And sadly the usage is
108 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
109 to associate it to my home and person. I would prefer it if only
110 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal. There are options
111 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
112 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.
</p
>
117 <title>The new
"best
" multimedia player in Debian?
</title>
118 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</link>
119 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</guid>
120 <pubDate>Mon,
6 Jun
2016 12:
50:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
121 <description><p
>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
122 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
">which
123 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
124 MIME types
</a
>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
125 the various players claimed support for. The range was from
55 to
130
126 MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all
127 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
128 their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types
129 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.
</p
>
131 <p
>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
132 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
133 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
134 favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
135 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
136 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport
">Multimedia
137 player MIME type support status
</a
> Debian wiki page.
</p
>
139 <p
>The new
"best
" multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by
140 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
141 kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
142 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
143 toten and parole.
</p
>
145 <p
>A sad observation is that only
14 MIME types are listed as
146 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
147 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
148 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
149 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
150 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find
151 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
152 players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
158 <title>A program should be able to open its own files on Linux
</title>
159 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html
</link>
160 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html
</guid>
161 <pubDate>Sun,
5 Jun
2016 08:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
162 <description><p
>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
163 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
164 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine. I
165 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
166 the day before I would give the talk. The next day I took a plane to
167 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
168 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
169 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file. I cursed a bit and
170 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
171 present when I arrived. I tested that the saved files could be
172 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued. I continued to polish the
173 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
174 be loaded into kpresenter. In the end I had to rewrite the slides
175 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
176 shorter. After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem
&ndash;
177 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
178 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
179 program to make slides. The point I
'm trying to make is that we
180 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
181 embarrassing to its developers if it can
't.
</p
>
183 <p
>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
184 files from the desktop file browser? It is not a uncommon problem. A
185 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
186 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
187 browser would refuse to open. No video player claimed to understand
188 such file. I tracked down the cause being
<tt
>file --mime-type
</tt
>
189 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
190 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand. I asked for
191 <a href=
"http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=
382">file to change its
192 behavour
</a
> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead. I also asked
193 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
194 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files. After a
195 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
196 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.
</p
>
198 <p
>But history repeats itself. A few days ago I tested the music
199 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
200 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
201 (*.rg). I
've reported
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/
825993">the
202 rosegarden problem to BTS
</a
> and a fix is commited to git and will be
203 included in the next upload. To increase the chance of me remembering
204 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
205 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.
</p
>
207 <p
>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
208 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file. The output from
209 <tt
>file --mime-type
</tt
> mentioned above, and the content of the
210 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/). The file MIME
211 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
212 information is collected from
213 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/
">the
214 desktop files
</a
> available in /usr/share/applications/. If there is
215 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
216 activated when asking to open a given file. If there are more, one
217 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
218 selecting the wanted one using
'Open with
' or similar. In general
219 this work well. But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
221 <a href=
"http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml
">a
222 MIME type registered with IANA
</a
>), file and/or the shared MIME
223 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
224 type in its list of supported MIME types.
</p
>
226 <p
>The
<tt
>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml
</tt
> entry for
227 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec
">the
228 Shared MIME database
</a
> look like this:
</p
>
230 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
231 &lt;?xml version=
"1.0" encoding=
"UTF-
8"?
&gt;
232 &lt;mime-info xmlns=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info
"&gt;
233 &lt;mime-type type=
"audio/x-rosegarden
"&gt;
234 &lt;sub-class-of type=
"application/x-gzip
"/
&gt;
235 &lt;comment
&gt;Rosegarden project file
&lt;/comment
&gt;
236 &lt;glob pattern=
"*.rg
"/
&gt;
237 &lt;/mime-type
&gt;
238 &lt;/mime-info
&gt;
239 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
241 <p
>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
242 (it is a gzipped XML file). Note, it is much better to use an
243 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
244 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.
</p
>
246 <p
>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
247 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
248 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:
</p
>
250 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
251 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
252 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
253 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
255 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
257 <p
>The fix was to add
"audio/x-rosegarden;
" at the end of the
258 MimeType= line.
</p
>
260 <p
>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
261 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
262 <tt
>file --mime-type
</tt
> for the file, ensure the file ending and
263 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
264 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
265 support for this MIME type. If not, please report a bug to have it
271 <title>Tor - from its creators mouth
11 years ago
</title>
272 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html
</link>
273 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html
</guid>
274 <pubDate>Sat,
28 May
2016 14:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
275 <description><p
>A little more than
11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
276 the current President of
<a href=
"https://www.torproject.org/
">the Tor
277 project
</a
>, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
278 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">Norwegian Unix User group
</a
> (NUUG). A
279 video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
280 from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
281 on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
282 currently publishes its talks. You can
283 <a href=
"http://frikanalen.no/se
">watch the live stream using a web
284 browser
</a
> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
285 on demand page for the talk
286 "<a href=
"http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/
625599">Tor: Anonymous
287 communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.
</a
>".
</p
>
289 <p
>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
290 HTML video and Ogg Theora support:
</p
>
292 <p
><video width=
"70%
" poster=
"http://simula.gunkies.org/media/
625599/large_thumb/
20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg
" controls
>
293 <source src=
"http://simula.gunkies.org/media/
625599/theora/
20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv
" type=
"video/ogg
"/
>
294 </video
></p
>
296 <p
>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
297 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)
</p
>
302 <title>Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version
0.23 available in Debian unstable
</title>
303 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</link>
304 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</guid>
305 <pubDate>Wed,
25 May
2016 10:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
306 <description><p
><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram
">The isenkram
307 system
</a
> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
308 related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between
309 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
310 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases
311 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
312 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
313 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
314 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
315 install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few
316 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
317 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).
</p
>
319 <p
>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
320 good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon
321 is going away and is generally being replaced by
322 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/
">PackageKit
</a
>,
323 so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch
324 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
325 rewrite finally took place. I
've just uploaded a new version of
326 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
327 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out,
328 install the
<tt
>isenkram
</tt
> package and insert some hardware dongle
329 and see if it is recognised.
</p
>
331 <p
>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
332 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
333 program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:
</p
>
335 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
351 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
353 <p
>The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way
354 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
355 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/
">the
356 cross distribution appstream system
</a
>.
358 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/
">previous
359 blog posts about isenkram
</a
> to learn how to do that.
</p
>
364 <title>Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian
</title>
365 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</link>
366 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</guid>
367 <pubDate>Mon,
23 May
2016 09:
35:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
368 <description><p
>Yesterday I updated the
369 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
370 package in Debian
</a
> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
371 enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes.
372 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in
373 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
374 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
375 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
376 called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
377 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
378 graph window pop up as expected.
</p
>
380 <p
>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
381 graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of
382 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages
383 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
386 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-rate.png
"/
></p
>
388 <p
>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
389 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
390 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red
391 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers
100 percent:
393 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-history.png
"/
></p
>
395 <p
>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to
80
396 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
397 shrinking. :(
</p
>
399 <p
>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
400 more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply
401 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
402 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now
403 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
406 <p
>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
408 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
</a
>
409 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
410 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
<a
411 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats
">github
</a
>.
412 Patches are very welcome.
</p
>
414 <p
>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
415 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
416 <b
><a href=
"bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a
></b
>.
</p
>
421 <title>French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble
</title>
422 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</link>
423 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</guid>
424 <pubDate>Sat,
21 May
2016 10:
50:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
425 <description><p
>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
426 2004 book Cultura Libre was published. Today I noticed that the book
427 is now available from book stores. You can now buy it from
428 <a href=
"http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/
8269018260">Amazon
</a
>
430 <a href=
"http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/
1123776705">Barnes
431 & Noble
</a
> ($?) and as always from
432 <a href=
"http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-
22645082.html
">Lulu.com
</a
>
433 ($
19.99). The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project. If
434 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $
10.59, while if you buy
435 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
436 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
439 <p
>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
440 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon. Not quite sure how
441 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
442 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
443 the paperback edition, they are
444 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig
">available
445 from github
</a
>.
</p
>
450 <title>I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)
</title>
451 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html
</link>
452 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html
</guid>
453 <pubDate>Thu,
19 May
2016 14:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
454 <description><p
>I just donated to the
455 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">NUUG defence
456 "fond
"</a
> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
457 site popcorn-time.no tested in court. I hope everyone that agree with
458 me will do the same.
</p
>
460 <p
>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
461 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
462 talking to a judge first? I am. What if the free software system
463 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
464 and was called Popcorn Time? Would that affect your view? It still
465 make me worried.
</p
>
467 <p
>In March
2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
468 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
469 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
470 the courts. I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
471 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
472 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
473 permission first. I was even more surprised when I had a look at
474 <a href=
"https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no
">the web
475 site content on the Internet Archive
</A
>, and only found news coverage
476 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
477 holders permissions.
</p
>
479 <p
>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
480 example
<a href=
"http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/
2016/
03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim
">Hegnar Online
</a
> and
481 <a href=
"http://itavisen.no/
2016/
03/
08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/
">ITavisen
<a/
>
483 <a href=
"http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-
1.12842452">NRK
</a
>),
484 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
486 <a href=
"http://blogg.torvund.net/
2016/
03/
09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/
">protests
487 from the law professor Olav Torvund
</a
> and
488 <a href=
"http://www.klassekampen.no/article/
20160311/ARTICLE/
160319995">lawyer
489 Jon Wessel-Aas
</a
>. It even got some
490 <a href=
"https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-
160418/
">coverage
491 on TorrentFreak
</a
>.
</p
>
494 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
">
495 wrote about the case a month ago
</a
>, when the
496 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a
> (NUUG),
497 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
498 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
499 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
500 legally challenged. They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
501 those that want to support the request.
</p
>
503 <p
>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
504 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
505 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
506 suggest you
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">show
507 your support by donating to NUUG
</a
>.
</a
>
512 <title>Debian now with ZFS on Linux included
</title>
513 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</link>
514 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</guid>
515 <pubDate>Thu,
12 May
2016 07:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
516 <description><p
>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
517 <a href=
"http://zfsonlinux.org/
">ZFS for Linux
</a
> finally entered
518 Debian. The package status can be seen on
519 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux
">the package tracker
520 for zfs-linux
</a
>. and
521 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
">the
522 team status page
</a
>. If you want to help out, please join us.
523 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git
">The
524 source code
</a
> is available via git on Alioth. It would also be
525 great if you could help out with
526 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms
">the dkms package
</a
>, as
527 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.
</p
>
532 <title>What is the best multimedia player in Debian?
</title>
533 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</link>
534 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</guid>
535 <pubDate>Sun,
8 May
2016 09:
40:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
536 <description><p
><strong
>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
537 Debian claim support for most file formats.
</strong
></p
>
539 <p
>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
540 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
541 Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
542 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
543 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
544 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia
">The
545 result
</a
> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
546 not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
547 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
550 <p
>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
551 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
552 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
553 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/
822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
554 desktop file
</a
>. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
555 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
556 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
557 two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
558 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
559 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
560 support most file formats.
</p
>
562 <p
>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
563 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport
">a
564 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
565 in the table
</a
>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
566 listed first in the table.
</p
>
568 </p
>The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
569 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
570 kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME